Today’s blessed relief comes from Hecate, whose “Discussing the Undiscussible” post goes directly to my own concerns of late:

Mystical experience, the experience of the mystic, what it is that mystics experience — that stuff is, almost by definition, idiomatic. It cannot be translated into any standard language, although it is possible that the language of exceptional music, exceptional art, exceptional poetry (over prose), may come close.

My deepest mystical experience — and this is odd for a mammal, living in the flesh — is observing bright, late-afternoon sunshine on leaves, grocking photosynthesis and the symphony inherent therein, being in a forest or a garden. Yesterday, I walked through the Brookside Gardens and sucked, as a hungry child suckles a breast, upon the amazing sight of sunlight filtered though deep forest shade. I see Fairies there, but I mean the word “fairie” in a scary and Earth-centered sense. I reminded myself that I can go on living.

When I wrote,

Because I DO have a mother, and I finally know I have a soul.

After growing slowly in my awareness all along, it’s here now in the nick of time. I’m talking about the Big Momma, chilluns, the all-enfolding love of all Creation. MOTHER NATURE, Mother Earth, the stuff my body’s made of, the thing we can’t define or do without, the ultimate redemption: Goddess loves me, this I know, for my tears, they tell me so. (Put it any way you want.)

what Hecate writes is what I meant. Late afternoon sunlight on leaves is something I understand, too. But I’m 200 pounds of do-the-dishes-when-the-spoons-are-gone, I can’t write about breasts and sucking. Er, suckling. That’s it, though: nourishment from “our Mother,” as a commenter expressed. And note how the author is replenished by the experience. (“I can go on living,” etc.) The line about the fairies is important, too, for conveying a sense of the quality of the energy involved. This is precisely what I’ve found to be true in really wild places, where I’ve felt it. A lot of you must know what I’m talking about.

It’s so important.

It was a beautiful day today, so I made a short video with my MacBook. It’s called “Adobe Shadows,” and you can also find it at Taos Video Circus (my YouTube channel).

It happens fast at 7,000 feet.

This morning the clouds are hanging low over the mountains. There’s actually an overcast. It rained last night, and the temperature outside is barely 60 degrees. There’s fire-building in my future, though it seems we’ve hardly had a summer. I see a flurry of activity as migrating hummingbirds crowd the feeders. The chamisa is blooming, bright sweet yellow flowers everywhere, with lots of bees. Roadside vendors have sweet peas for sale.

Tomorrow I’ll look up and see the aspen on the mountains turning yellow too. Noooo, not yet! I’ve hardly even sweated, only one day I remember when I had to change my shirt. “At least” it’s beautiful. Stunning, really, as always.

I’m free and healthy and 63. Stand by, as always, for new developments. The Taos Podcast is coming soon.

I forgot to get this posted a couple of weeks ago — gee, I wonder why? — but here it is.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize elements of previous blog posts assembled into a new whole. Not quite like building Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, although related, and with much better results. This was just published in the August edition of Horse Fly. What’s more, the publisher thought it was so good, he paid me extra, a thing possibly unprecedented in the history of writing. At any rate, you can read it now without coming here to buy a paper:

JOHNNY & THE HORNED TOADS

Years ago in Texas (sorry), we called them “horny toads.”

I’d just turned 13 and didn’t know what “horny” meant, outside of the context of the critters — adolescent urges notwithstanding — but you could find the lizards everywhere, even in town. Back in junior high school in Abilene, in those glorious pre-air-conditioned days when just surviving until the final bell was an accomplishment, the reptiles were a God-given source of distraction from the heat of study hall.

We sat at actual wooden desks with inkwells and lids that opened up. Nobody used fountain pens or had any ink, so dipping pigtails wasn’t an option. But you could grab a “horny toad” at recess, lightly scratch its scaly belly to put it to sleep, and set it gently on its back inside the desk where Peggy Sue would sit. After everyone had taken their seats and study hall had settled into a sodden stupor broken only occasionally by yawns and sounds of shuffling papers, the animal would wake up and start skittering around. The victim usually opened her desk to see what was the matter, and you can guess the rest. This trick only worked with girls, of course, because they screamed so well. The perpetrator generally came to the rescue while his comrades smirked, scooping the lizard up and dropping it out the window. (Why this reminds me now of Homeland Security, I’m not sure, but see what you can do with it.)

Three years ago in Llano Quemado, I missed the photo of a lifetime. I’d taken a walk without my camera — guaranteeing at least a miracle — and sure enough there was one. About halfway up the dirt track on the mesa, something wriggled in the road 20 feet ahead and then sat still. As I approached, I saw it move again: a horned toad trying to get traction in the fine brown sand. But what was that on its right hind leg? Good Lord, a baby horned toad riding on its mother’s back! I honestly couldn’t believe it. The lizards froze when I squatted down beside them, and then I saw a second baby in the dust a couple of inches to the rear. The baby on its mothers back was spotted just like she was, while this one matched the color and texture of the ground it sat on. The mimicry was perfect. The late afternoon sun illuminated the camouflaged tableau with golden yellow light. My camera, if I’d had it, would have been 18 inches from the horned toad family, who held their position until I stood.

* * *

This summer, for whatever reasons, I see horned toad hatchlings all the time, and I’m amazed. There’s just a twitch, a thing that might be real or not, like a floater in your eye, and there they are, fully formed and no bigger than a thumbnail! Yesterday I took my camera on a hike and finally got a close-up shot: the piñon needles on the ground are longer than the tiny beast… They must be like Fritos for the magpies. How ever do they make it?

Try to find out anything about horned toads, and you’ll encounter contradictions. They’re disappearing, or they’re not, for one thing. The young receive no parental care, supposedly, although I saw differently here in Llano. New Mexico writer S. Omar Baker, who died at the age of 90 in 1953, once wrote,

“The horny toad, ill-graced but harmless
Is thought by some to be quite charmless
At least he helps eat garden ants up
And does not try to crawl your pants up.”

The easy familiarity with something few see or take notice of today disturbs me, even as I smile. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving down a twisty, rocky lane. The air was sharply cool and damp from the previous night’s rain, the warm sunlight welcome by comparison. Halfway down the hill I stopped, incredulous: sitting in the road looking up at me below the open driver’s window was a HUGE GREEN BULLFROG the size of a cantaloupe! We stared at each other for a long moment, and then I drove off, checking in my rearview mirror that I hadn’t seen a mirage.

Sometimes I feel I’ve won the lotto on another planet, and then I wake up, remembering I’ve always been right here. What happens in the in-between, though, and where did everybody go?

This won’t make much sense to anyone outside the state, but here goes:

See this picture? I can’t ever walk past a “Win This Car!” banner without at least inquiring as to the price of the raffle tickets. In this case a chance to win the 2008 Nissan Versa being given away a month from now by The Rock Christian Fellowship of Española cost $20, so I jumped on it. Who doesn’t need another car, especially one that gets 38 mpg?

Need not be present to win!

My ticket is number 1813, so they’ve sold a bunch of ‘em. But that’s not the point of this post. Rather, the way the car is described and equipped is. Española is pretty much the center of lowrider culture in New Mexico, and these guys love their wheels. This may be a church raffle, but the little Nissan economy car already has aftermarket mag wheels and dark tinted windows, har. What’s more, the ticket describes the vehicle as “fully loaded…”

So I know I’m in good hands. If anyone can turn a Versa into a car freak’s object of desire, the dudes I bought my ticket from can. Now all I have to do is win!

I’m on the way to a short dental appointment in Santa Fe: distance from Llano Quemado (Ranchos de Taos) is about 70 miles. For unimportant reasons, I left early and have about 40 minutes to kill, so I stopped at the Oasis Cybercafe in Española where I am now…

Caffeine and comfort

It’s on the edge of town in an old adobe home. The proprietress has a huge Rastafarian mound of multi-colored hair (at least four colors) and maybe two dozen bracelets. I’m listening to the Grateful Dead on the in-house sound system and enjoying my latte in a small reading room with a sofa and a Queen Anne’s chair. I’m surrounded by potted geraniums, and no one is bothering me. Jerry Garcia aside, it’s quiet here — and I sure don’t mind Jerry!

And BTW, this is the only town in New Mexico (and maybe the U.S.) to have a highway named after a yogi. No kidding: as soon as I walk out the door and get in the car, two minutes later I’ll cross the Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway. Make that a second or third reason I love this place.

Onward…

A slightly different version of this and one other at FotoFeed. That’s from early yesterday afternoon, taken five minutes south of town looking roughly north.

Rio Grand Gorge w/ storm over Lobo Peak

Probably only Leos broadcast their birthdays in advance. No, not to get presents or put on airs — Leos don’t have to — but because they feel free to do so. It’s natural. The last thing my wife would do, or would have done even many years ago, is talk up her birthday, except privately to intimates. Not me! On the other hand…

Nagasaki

Today is Hiroshima Day, and I was born on August 9th, the day we dropped the second a-bomb on Nagasaki. The actual day, not the anniversary. That’s always felt significant to me, although there had to have been many thousands of other people born that day all over the world. (I wonder how we’re doing?)

I take my birthdays very seriously. They’re like portals, you know. Because of that, while I sometimes like to get raucous, I generally try to think of something personally important to do on those days, as opposed to merely seeking entertainment. Not that I have anything against a blow-out party, nosirree, it’s just that some of the best things happen in the all-alone. That may make me one weird Leo [see above], but that’s the way it goes.

This might be the year I climb a mountain, or go up as far as I can get. I might even spend the night out there. My wife actually suggested that, which shows how much she’d like a little peace and quiet. I have minimal Wal-Mart dilettante outdoor equipment, which is to say cheap shoes, ordinary clothes, a decent backpack, a couple of water bottles, and not much sense. I’m also not in shape, but then how many of my contemporaries are even standing? Besides, it’s part of the transcendental experience, what with sweating off 10 pounds and over-stressing every joint. And the long hot bath after I come home is to die for, irony intended.

How cold could it be this time of year at 11,000 feet, anyway?

I’m slowly catching up, still a day or two behind, but there are four more to see.

Meanwhile: here, for your viewing pleasure, is a baby horned toad. Yes, I finally “caught” one. This is a telephoto shot from about four feet away, cropped in Photoshop to bring it even closer. That’s one reason it’s a little blurry. The other reason is that I was in a hurry, obviously. And those are pine needles it’s clambering over, which should tell you something about the size (less than one inch long):

I’ve seen even smaller ones, too!

Things like this never happen when I have my camera with me.

Yesterday my wife and I took our exercise walk up the mesa. On the way back we saw two baby horned toads! These were two separate incidents, amazingly. And when I say “baby,” I mean tiny, about the size of my thumbnail. I took this relative abundance to be a good sign. After all, how many folks have ever seen a baby horned toad?

A couple of years ago I saw two babies riding on their mother’s back, one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever witnessed. She froze in the middle of the dusty trail, giving me a good long look as I stood right over them. This was extraordinary enough, to see the three of them, but then one of the little ones crawled off and walked a few inches away, onto a patch of sand that was much lighter in color than his (?) mother’s back. And then he changed color to match! I mean, in no more than a second or two. I didn’t even know they did that, but this one sure as hell did.

So today I walked up there by myself, and of course I took my camera. Hah. Nary a horned toad to be seen, naturally.

Run away, run away

But I did run across a piñacate beetle, otherwise known colloquially as a “stinkbug.” I’ve run into these before, and they deserve the nickname. It was the only animal I saw on this walk, but I had a good time anyway. I think I would rather just “be” out in the wilderness than do almost anything else in this world, even if all I see is a stinkbug. It has to do with the universal quality of consciousness arising from no thought.

I worry less and less these days. I know that’s odd, considering my history of apocalyptic rants. And by the way, did you know the Germans are preparing for a huge crowd in Berlin for Obama’s speech?